Communication complexity

Okay, imagine you and your friend want to talk to each other using these cool walkie-talkies you got. But you're not standing next to each other. Your friend is far away on the other side of the playground.

Now, let's say you and your friend want to play a game of tag. You need to tell your friend who is "it" so you can start playing. But you don't want everyone else on the playground to know who's "it" because then the game wouldn't be fun. So, how can you tell your friend without anyone else hearing?

This is where communication complexity comes in. Communication complexity is basically how much information you need to share with someone in order for them to understand what you're trying to communicate.

So, back to the walkie-talkies. If you and your friend use simple words and phrases like "you're it" or "I got you," then your communication complexity is low. You don't need to share a lot of information for your friend to understand the message.

But let's say you and your friend decide to use secret code words to communicate. You have a list of words that mean different things, like "banana" means "you're it" and "orange" means "I got you." Now your communication complexity is higher because you need to share more information for your friend to understand your message.

Communication complexity is important in lots of different fields, like computer science and math. It helps people figure out how much information needs to be shared between different parts of a computer or between different people in a complex problem.

So, next time you play tag with your friends, think about how much information you're sharing with them and how complex your communication is!